Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post-Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side

"You know you're in for a memoir of dysfunction, depression, drugs, drink, and despair when Elias declares that as a child 'being bad was what I did best.' By the time she was seven, she and her family had left Syria because of increasing political and religious tensions and moved to Detroit, because of its large Arabic community, to start a new life. Elias soon discovers that there will never be a better life, for her parents were more interested in using America for what they can get from it than in Americanizing. Bullied at school and failing to fit in at home or at school, Elias remains an outsider trying to find a way into a circle of friends and into this new world; soon enough, she has rejected so much that there is a void inside her, and she starts to fill that void with drugs, sex, and punk rock, hardening herself against the pain. In this compulsively page-turning memoir of her search for herself, Elias takes us on a tour of her hell as she moves from Detroit to New York's Lower East Side; once in New York, she sells drugs, does drugs, discovers new and more powerful drugs, falls in and out of love, becomes an award-winning hair stylist, performs with punk when she can, goes to jail, and eventually hits bottom and goes straight. Haunting and mesmerizing, Elias's story captures powerfully the vulnerability of being an outsider and the deep yearnings to be a part of something, to fit in." Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

“First time author Elias, who has been clean since 1997, has enough distance to speak on her past unashamedly, with clear-eyed intelligence and without judging her younger self too harshly…strong stuff, with some truly amazing stories well told.” Kirkus Reviews

"Rayya Elias's life reads like Huck Finn on heroin. Her story of fleeing Syria as a child, growing up in Detroit and spending her young adulthood trolling around the East Village is as American as they come, including as it does immigration, addiction and hard won deliverance. Through it all Elias's voice burns fire hot and is completely engaging." Darcey Steinke

“Rayya Elias's Harley Loco grabs you by the throat on the very first page, and then never stops shaking you — even after you've closed the book. It's a punk song disguised as a memoir: raw, slashing, gritty, and shot through with all the wild confusion of youth. But it's also wise, unpredictable, and relentlessly affecting.” Jonathan Miles

“Rayya Elias's twisted, devastating memoir of a life lived on the margins can take its rightful place alongside The Basketball Diaries, Please Kill Me and Just Kids as a classic, blood-stained love letter to bohemian NYC.” Craig Marks

“Rayya Elias's recovery/coming out/East Village memoir brutally and honestly reminds us that replacing love with drugs keeps a woman a child. The redemption here is in her Syrian immigrant family. Their undying love and persistence remains her anchor and moves the reader to that place of transcendence that only unconditional love can create.” Sarah SchulmanM

“Do any of us really know ourselves? This kind of exploration into the human spirit is what true religion is about.” Deborah Harry

Rayya Elias was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1960 and moved to the United States in 1967. She is a musician, hairdresser, and filmmaker, and also sells real estate to make some extra scratch. Elias lives in New York City and has been clean since August 8, 1997.